Welcome to the boards. We like studying Japanese, too. You should try your hand at shiritori or let us know what you're doing right now in the Japanese Chat page.

Oh! And to type a small ュ character, or any of the vowels and compound character halves, just type x on your keyboard and then the character. For example, xa xai xu xe xo changes あいうえお into ぁぃぅぇぉ and やゆよ into ゃゅょ.

edit: And typing "du" gives you a づ. Which is a helpful thing to know when you're using smart.fm and it asks you to type つづける in diction, while you're being timed, and you keep trying and making mistakes and thus lowering your proficiency score. Aaaaaah my tragic life!!!!!!

Welcome to the boards. We like studying Japanese, too. You should try your hand at shiritori or let us know what you're doing right now in the Japanese Chat page.

Oh! And to type a small ュ character, or any of the vowels and compound character halves, just type x on your keyboard and then the character. For example, xa xai xu xe xo changes あいうえお into ぁぃぅぇぉ and やゆよ into ゃゅょ.

edit: And typing "du" gives you a づ. Which is a helpful thing to know when you're using smart.fm and it asks you to type つづける in diction, while you're being timed, and you keep trying and making mistakes and thus lowering your proficiency score. Aaaaaah my tragic life!!!!!!

It's pretty useful. If there are items of vocab you don't know in the beginner's chat, you can enable rikaichan and then (9/10) find out what they mean. Of course, this won't help with the grammar, but that's why you're taking lessons.